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The Democratic Ideal 




THE 

Democratic Ideal 




BY MILTON REED 




BOSTON 

American Unitarian Association 

J 907 





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Copyright, J 907 

American Unitarian Association 

9 



Printed by the Heintzemann Press, Boston, Mass. 



1 



> HIS little book is dedicated to the memory 
of my parents, who taught their children 
to revere the principles upon which the Ameri- 
can Republic is founded, and who, with millions 
of their fellow-countrymen, believed in it as the 
safeguard and nourisher of the "Democratic 
Ideal 



The benign influence of good laws under a 
free government, the ever favorite object in 

my heart. Washington 



Plowing up in earnest the interminable av- 
erage fallows of humanity, — not good gov- 
ernment merely, in the common sense, — is 
the justification and main purpose of these 
United States. 



Walt Whitman 



The true democracy is that which permits 
every individual to put forth his maximum 
strength. Pasteur 



The nation that has the schools has the 

ftrtUTC- Bismarck 



Principles are the seed to be sown in this 
field of time. The order of nature, which is 
God's providence, will mature the fruit. 

Horace Mann 

The only final strength is rightness. 

Ruskin 

There is nothing so mischievous in the peo- 
ple's choice as the existence of any human 
power capable of resisting it. 

In the infancy of nations, man forms the 
State ; in their maturity the State forms the 
man. 

Montesquieu 

History embraces ideas as much as events 
and derives its best virtue from regions be- 
yond the sphere of State. 

J r Lord Acton 

It is not the number of the people that 
makes a great nation ; a great nation is a nation 
that produces great men. _ . „ 

r & Lord Beaconsfield 



When the church is social worth, 
When the State House is the hearth, 
Then the perfect State is come, 
The republican at home. 

Emerson 

One thought ever at the fore — 
That in the Divine Ship, the World, breast- 
ing Time and Space, 
All Peoples of the globe together sail, sail 
the same voyage, are bound to the 
same destination. 

Walt Whitman 



The Democratic Ideal 




THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL 

^ HE shrewd saying of the Swed- 
ish Chancellor Oxenstiern, An 
nescis, mi fili, quantilla pruden- 
tia regitur orbis? — "Dost thou 
not know, my son, with how little wisdom the 
world is governed?" has been substantially 
true in every epoch in the world's history. 
Everything human must needs be imperfect, 
and in nothing is imperfection more plainly 
exhibited than in the successive schemes of 
government which men have attempted. Some 
have been broad-based and have lasted for 
whatwe, in our ordinary reckoning, call along 
period of time. But most of them have been 
built on the sand; a few storms, shocks, con- 
vulsions, and they have fallen. Men have gen- 
erally made but sorry work in trying to govern 
each other. The individual may govern him- 



<H THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t* 

self after a fashion ; but to try to govern wise- 
ly another man, or, harder still, great masses 
of men, even where there has been community 
of public interests, of language, religion and 
customs, — ay, there has been the rub. Hu- 
man history has often been called a great trag- 
edy ; but no tragic element is more ghastly or 
more overwhelming than the catastrophes in 
which most governments havecollapsed. Am- 
bitious attempts at world-power, the most 
splendid combinations to group nations into 
a civic unity, have tottered to their fall, as 
surely as the little systems which have had their 
day and ceased to be, — shifting, fleeting, im- 
potent. 

It is not difficult to see why this has been 
so. Social life is only one phase of the great 
organic life of the species ; one scene of the 
human drama of which the earth has been "the 
wide and universal theatre." Change, transi- 
tion, development, birth, growth, death, are 
universal elements in the cosmic order. Of the 
6 < 



«* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL ?& 

slow but inevitable changes in the physical his- 
tory of the earth, Tennyson says : — 

" There rolls the deep, where stood the tree ; 

earth, what changes hast thou seen ! 
There where the long street roars, has been 

The stillness of the central sea" 

" The hills are shadows, and they flow 
Trom form to form ; and nothing stands ; 

They melt like mists, the solid lands ; 

Tike clouds they shape themselves and go.'* 

If this mutation be true of organic changes 
in the physical earth, working through im- 
measurable 220ns, it is even as dramatically true 
of organized social life. 

We are learning to take a new view of his- 
tory. It is no longer regarded as a collection 
of isolated facts. Veracious history is a record 
of the orderly progression of events, devel- 
oped by evolutionary processes. There is in 
it no break, no hiatus, excepting such tempo- 
rary interruptions as come from what Emer- 

7 



<* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r& 

son calls " the famous might that lurks in re- 
action and recoil." Thus we learn the ration- 
ale of the events transcribed to the historical 
page. Until science lifted the curtain on "the 
eternal landscape of the past" man knew little 
of himself or of his kind. It is only with the 
enlarged vision that has come to us from the 
researches of the ethnologist, biologist, an- 
thropologist, sociologist, that we have begun 
to learn what a creature man really is ; to study 
his inner nature ; to get at the deeper mean- 
ings of the history of the race. 

Once the study of history was thought to 
be hardly more than learning a catalogue of 
royal dynasties ; the names of famous generals 
and statesmen ; of battles lost and won ; of 
court intrigues ; of the vicissitudes of king- 
doms ; of the prowess of pioneers and adven- 
turers ; of " hair-breadth 'scapes f the immi- 
nent deadly breach " ; of " the pride, pomp 
and circumstance of glorious war ! " Such in- 
cidents have not lost, and never can lose, their 

8 



<** THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL ^ 

interest. They are an integral part of the hu- 
man document and must always be studied. 
When draped with myth and legend they min- 
ister to "the vision and faculty divine " of the 
poet; visualize thepossibili ties of human cour- 
age ; stimulate the affections ; answer to the 
eternal cravings of the imagination. But they 
are only the phenomena of the real history of 
the race. Life is broader, larger, deeper, rich- 
er, fuller, than a mere transcript of happen- 
ings, — externals, results, — important as 
they are. We must get at the causes, motives, 
interrelations, the hidden sources from which 
events spring before we can unravel the web in 
which they are woven, and thus interpret them. 
The core of history is the element which 
the Greeks called to avOpconrelov {to anthro- 
peion) ; called by a modern poet " the bases of 
life"; called by us average folk Human Na- 
ture. It is as constant a quality as anything can 
be in our moving life. We may not be able to 
agree with Middleton, who says, in his Life 

9 



40* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

of Cicero : " Human nature has ever been 
the same in all ages and nations " ; but it is 
probably true that nothing has changed Jess 
in primal qualities than the bases of life. Em- 
pires have perished, civilizations vanished, 
governments have rotted, languages, territo- 
rial lines, seemingly sit-fast institutions, have 
passed into nothingness ; but the human ele- 
ment has stood the shock of ages. " The one 
remains; the many change and pass," said 
Shelley. Man-character, man-life is the one 
element, the colors of which seem fast. It is, 
like all other things, subject to revolutionary 
changes; it may be differentiated into a thou- 
sand forms ; but the bases of life have never 
shifted. 

Human history is a great tragedy indeed. 
But, like all tragedies, it has its spiritualizing, 
sanctifying, ennobling side. When the drama 
of the ages is unrolled we see much to make 
us weep; but we also see immeasurably more 
to make us glory that we are a part of the race. 



« THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL ^ 

"While its history reeks with blood, carnage, 
oppression, injustice, cruelty, in which sad 
facts the pessimist hears " the eternal note of 
sadness," and unwisely rushes into a denial of 
the moral order, — it has its sun-bright tri- 
umphs of rectitude, and the illuminating pic- 
ture of the steady and glorious advance of man- 
kind from brutishness into an orderly, mor- 
alized life. 

Readers of Matthew Arnold, — an author 
whose intellectual vision was great, and whose 
style is one of the literary ornaments of the 
last century, — will recall how he was taken 
with what he called " Mr. Darwin's famous 
proposition " that " our ancestor was a hairy 
quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed 
ears, probably arboreal in his habits." Mr. 
Arnold, the apostle of culture, played again 
and again around this sonorous phrase. Far 
be it from me to enter upon any discussion of 
the Darwinian hypothesis of the genesis of the 
human race. On this large theme the last word 



«? THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t+ 

has not been said. Knowledge must grow from 
more to more before we can posit anything 
definite on a subject veiled at present in inscru- 
table mystery. But, in its essence, the evolu- 
tionary theory has soaked into our modern 
thought. The literature and the progressive 
teaching of our latter day are drenched with 
it. It certainly can be said of it, that it explains 
many things which have heretofore seemed in- 
explicable, and marks a great advance in popu- 
lar intelligence. But the most ambitious gen- 
eralization isonly a temporary expedient. Fact 
will merge in fact; law will melt into a larger 
law; one deep of knowledge will call unto 
another deep ; much that the proudest scien- 
tist of our day calls knowledge will vanish 
away ; many theories now popular will be dis- 
sected and pruned, and will be found to be 
" such stuff as dreams are made on," before 
the most enlightened humanity of a future age 
catches any one phase of nature in its snare and 
compresses it into rigid laws. 



** THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t* 

Nevertheless, the ancestor of man was brut- 
ish, and his descendants are where they are. 
Whether or not primeval man was the rather 
unpicturesque creature described by Mr. Ar- 
nold, he was the norm from which has come 
" the heir of all the ages." 

From the cave-dweller, the aboriginal sav- 
age, have been evolved Homer, Plato, Aris- 
totle, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Milton, Dante, 
Newton, Gladstone, Pascal, La Place, Lincoln, 
Emerson, Channing, Marti neau, Thomas a 
Kempis, Phillips Brooks, Darwin and Her- 
bert Spencer. How magnificent the ascent ! 
How glorious the progression ! 

Man, once the companion of the 

Dragons of the prime 
That tare each other in their slime, 
has flowered into an intellectual, reasoning, 
moral being, — " how infinite in faculty ; in 
form and moving how express and admirable; 
in action how like an angel ; in apprehension 
how like a god ! " 



<& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r* 

All this progress, however, has cost its price. 
Step by step has the race advanced from pri- 
meval animalism to its present status. It has 
walked with bleeding feet. The Divine econ- 
omy works in many ways. One of its ways 
i s to educate, sti mul ate and spiri tual ize through 
antagonism and pain. All faculties, functions 
and potencies must be worked in order that 
they may grow. Atrophy, decay, death, are 
the resultant of non-use. The sullen earth was 
to be fertilized by man's sweat and blood, be- 
fore it would yield any increase beyond its 
spontaneous productions. Conflict with the 
elements, conquest over the lower organisms, 
ages of toilsome effort, were to come before 
man was able " to dress the earth and to keep 
it." Out of the iron necessities of his being 
came initial progress; and progress once be- 
gun has never ceased. 

The great factor in progress was cooper- 
ation. One man alone can do little. The mo- 
ment human necessities were recognized, the 
14 



& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL >» 

Jaw of association applied. Man needed man. 
The family group, the clan, the tribe, the 
town, the city, the state, the nation, have been 
stages in the process of closer and closer co- 
operation. 

Confederation, association, combination, 
require adjustment, compromise, regulation. 
Hence the germ of government. To live to- 
gether each man must give way in something 
to the other. Man is gregarious ; he is natu- 
rally social ; instinctively he availed himself of 
the companionship of other men. The social 
status, the foedera generis humani — " the ties 
that unite the human family," — were slowly 
evolved from the increasing demands of man 
upon man ; they were not the result of bar- 
gaining. 

What a magnificent drama ! the world the 
theatre ; all mankind, emerging from primi- 
tive ignorance, the actors. How many or how 
long the acts were, we know not; — but 
through " that duration which maketh pyra- 

15 



<€* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t+ 

mids pillars of snow, and all that's past a mo- 
ment," — the wonderful scenes moved on. 
Out of the strong came forth sweetness. From 
brutal selfishness, from animal passion, came 
love. Slowly the central idea was reached, and, 
in the sublime language of the Scripture, man 
became a living soul, and his body became 
the temple of the Holy Spirit ; his conscious- 
ness a part of the infinite consciousness; his 
personality a world-copy of a divine universe. 
Reason, conscience, love, were his dower. 

The curtain has not yet fallen, and will 
never fall, upon the last act. We live in a 
world which is always in process. Nature's 
genesis is unceasing. " Without haste, with- 
out rest," her creative and re-creative pro- 
cesses are always operating. 

When one undertakes to talk about govern- 
ment he is drawn instinctively to some his- 
toric models. As thinking persons realized 
in every age the insufficiency of contempora- 
neous governments, there has scarcely been a 

16 



^ THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL »* 

time when the academic reformer was want- 
ing. Certain ages may have lacked poets, — 
ours is said to be unpoetic and prosaic, and 
to await its poet-prophet; but the academic 
idealist who could say, " Go to, let us build 
a government/ ' has been generally at hand. 
The dreams of the illuminated ones who have 
sought, by rul e and theory, to make the crooked 
straight, to convert mankind into angels by 
legal enactment, are among the most pleasing, 
if abortive, works of genius. Some of the no- 
blest spirits of the race have made this illu- 
sory effort. 

Plato, that splendid genius, in whose brain 
was wrapped the subtle essence which gave 
to Hellenic art and literature their incompar- 
able charm, found a congenial theme in 
painting his ideal Republic. It was a beauti- 
ful attempt to develop a republic based upon 
Socratic thought. He had sat at the feet of 
the great master of dialectic, and, with the hot 
enthusiasm of a reformer, painted a picture of 



<* THE DEMOCRATIC JDEAL t& 

the idealized man, Jiving in a community where 
the supremacy of the intellect was recognized 
as authoritative, where the individual and fam- 
ily were to be absorbed in the state, and where 
a lofty communism was to be established, and 
in which Virtue, Truth, Beauty and Good- 
ness were to be entities. But the Platonic 
Communism was one where equality and hu- 
manity were left out. Plato could not escape 
the Time-Spirit. The Platonic Republic was 
his Athens idealized. The very age and body 
of the time gave to the philosopher's dream 
its form and pressure. The actual Hellenic 
Republics were not based upon the rights of 
man ; a few ruled over a nation of proletariats 
and slaves. When they came into rough con- 
tact with the vigorous Roman civilization, 
they were shattered like iridescent bubbles. 
Even so wise-browed a philosopher as Plato 
failed to recognize sufficiently the human ele- 
ment. His imaginary republic was air-drawn, 
fantastic; a philosophic dream, with little 

18 



<& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL ^ 

grasp on life's realities. It was not broad- 
based. It did not recognize sufficiently the 
law of growth. It had no place in our work- 
a-day world. It interests us now chiefly from 
the superb literary skill with which it was 
constructed: a prodigy of intellect and art. 
But it was not the democratic ideal. 

Aristotle, — that other imperial Greek ge- 
nius, whom Dante called " the master of those 
that know/' — who had less imaginative mys- 
ticism than Plato, but a stronger hold on 
realities, — whose fertile genius touched al- 
most every subject that came within ancient 
thought, — tried his hand also in political 
science. As a forerunner of modern science, 
as a profound thinker, he has been a tremen- 
dous factor in the intellectual life of the world. 
But the Time-Spirit held him in its grasp 
even more firmly than it did Plato. His the- 
ory of the state avoided, indeed, the absurd- 
ity of communism, but recognized slavery 
and the subjection of women. Like many of 

19 



<i THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r> 

the modern Socialists, he denounced the tak- 
ing of interest for the use of money. Such 
political theories must needs be ineffective. 
They ignore the equitable basis of society 
and indicate a short-sightedness that is amaz- 
ing in any era when thrift, industry and prop- 
erty rights are elements in the life of a state, 
— as they were then and are now. 

Among the school-men of the middle ages, 
Aristotle was regnant. His hand has not yet 
been 1 i f ted from our uni ver si ty 1 i fe. Vast 1 i te- 
ratures had their birth in his philosophic sys- 
tem. His political theories have become only 
academic. The world has had no use for them. 
He was far from the democratic ideal. No 
one will deny that Plato and Aristotle are 
among those 

Dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns. 

Their sovereignty does not come, however, 
from their contributions to political science. 



<* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t* 

\ wish we might dwell longer on these 
dreams of philosophers. They offer a field 
for delightful study. We linger lovingly with 
them. How tenderly we read of the pious 
dream of St. Augustine for the Civitas Dei, 
the City of God; of a Christianized social or- 
der rising on the crumbling ruins of the Ro- 
man Empire. The advent of Christianity had 
brought into the world the auroral flush of a 
new moral order, a quickened sense of social 
duty ; a warmth of human brotherhood ; a 
heightened conscience. The church was ris- 
ing like a splendid mausoleum over the sepul- 
chre of its founder. The world thrilled with 
an emotion never felt before. What more nat- 
ural than that a new social order should arise, 
into which should be gathered all classes of 
men, glorified, purified, ready for the advent 
of the conquering Galilean, which was then 
almost universally anticipated. But alas, the 
Augustine City of God has not come as a 
human status. It will never come as a polit- 



<& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r& 

ical organization. Its home is in the human 
heart. It is not Lo here or Lo there; and 
cometh not with observation. The City of 
God, the City of Light, will come when ethi- 
cal consciousness is so quickened that law be- 
comes love and love, law. 

We might go on and say more of the ex- 
alted dreamers who from age to age have at- 
tempted the impossible task of idealizing the 
State by geometric rules or fantastic theories. 
Perhaps the two most notable, — at least un- 
til the recent expansion of Socialistic propa- 
ganda, — were the Utopia of Sir Thomas 
More and the New Atlantis of Lord Bacon. 
We must dismiss them by naming them. They 
lacked the democratic ideal. Yet, among the 
many gems which Lord Bacon has given to 
our language, — those short, terse phrases 
which make him one of the most quotable of 
authors, — is one memorable line in his " New 
Atlantis." He said of the Father of Solo- 
mon 's House, — "He had an aspect as 



<& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t* 

though he pitied men." Benignant and bles- 
sed thought! 

y One, however, of the world's intellectual 
sovereigns, who lived in the uplands of the 
imagination, who traversed the gamut of hu- 
man experience, and of whom we may say, if 
of any man, — " he saw life steadily and saw 
it whole,' ' in dealing with the relation of man 
to the civic order, never indulged in illusions, 
— "William Shakspeare. It has often been said 
to his reproach that his dramas are not instinct 
with the spirit of liberty ; that he believed 
in the right of the strongest to rule; that 
he deified strength and power; that he showed 
contempt for the mob and " rabbi ement." 
We cannot go into a discussion of this inter- 
esting matter. We must remember, however, 
a fact that is often overlooked, — that Shak- 
speare was not only most extraordinary as a 
poet, but that he was one of the profoundest 
moralists that the world has known. His ge- 
nius was supremely sane, calm, judicial, healthy, 

23 



** THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t+ 

He painted men and women as they are. His 
nobly poised intellect and acute vision saw 
the realities of life. He knew the exalted pos- 
sibilities of spiritual excellence to which hu- 
manity can rise, and the abysmal depths into 
which it can sink. He recognized the fact 
that society is swayed by selfish interests 
oftener than by a devotion to high ideals. 
He read history with a microscopic eye. 
Dowden, one of his most acute interpreters, 
says : " Shakspeare studied and represented 
in his art the world which lay before him. 
If he prophesied the future it was in the or- 
dinary manner of prophets, but only by com- 
pletely embodying the present, in which the 
future was concerned." In his day the mob 
had not learned self-control, moral dignity, a 
discrimination between the transient and per- 
manent in politics. Has it learned this lesson 
yet? His immortal works exhibit no world- 
weariness, no blase pessimism. He saw the 
eternal relations of cause and effect. He 
24 



<fi THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL ** 

admired the intellectual powers and tremen- 
dous personal i ti es of great hi stori cal characters 
like Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and Richard 
111, but he also saw their limitations, moral 
delinquencies and weaknesses, which led inev- 
itably to the snares into which they fell. He 
had a profound sympathy with human life ; 
he was a lover of rectitude, nobility of char- 
acter, self-sacrifice, manliness, womanliness. 
Above all, he taught the everlasting and all- 
embracing equity with which the universe 
throbs. In the end, no cheat, no lie, no in- 
justice prospers. The sinner is a self-punisher. 
At last, by action of the inexorable, inescapa- 
ble moral order, "the wheel is come full cir- 
cle, ,, evil is strangled. 

To such an equitable intellect the idea of 
a Platonic Republic or New Atlantis would 
be as impossible as impracticable. He knew 
too well the plasticity of human adjustments, 
the shifting, fleeting, rising and sinking of 
the social order, — the possibilities of dis- 



<& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r> 

turbance and recoil that ever lie at the core of 
a placid and smug order of things, — to at- 
tempt any speculative panacea for the evils of 
society. He laid open the tap-root of all 
institutions and happenings, — the human 
heart. 

/ This is a digression ; but a strange fas- 
cination invests the name of Shakspeare. 
Thackeray said of the insanity of Dean Swift : 
"So great a man he seems to me, that think- 
ing of him is like thinking of an empire fall- 
ing." So when we talk of Shakspeare, it al- 
most seems that we are talking of collective 
humanity. He was no economic idealist; he 
built no systems of philosophy or law. He 
understood humanity. In spite of all criti- 
cisms, his view of life followed more closely 
than the pretentious systems of closet philos- 
ophers, the gleam of the democratic ideal ; — 
progression and growth. 



<& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r» 

We may consider government, or rather 
the sociaJ organism, as a working basis on 
which men manage to live together, receiving 
from and giving to each other protection for 
life and property. There is a noble phrase of 
Edmund Burke, — he was a master of noble 
phrases, — "Moulding together the great 
mysterious incorporation of the human race/ ' 
In order to have any basis on which human 
beings could live together, there must have 
been a moulding together of immense diver- 
sities. Human nature and human society are 
tremendously complex. No two persons are 
just alike; and each personality is a bundle of 
contradictory qualities. Government rests 
upon two forces, sovereignty and obedience. 
Somebody must command ; somebody must 
obey. Each of these forces is powerfully op- 
erative in most men. The love of authority, 
dominion, power, the will to make another do 
our bidding, is deeply planted in the human 
nature. Nothing is more intoxicating, more 

27 



** THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

enjoyable, than power. On the other hand, 
the principle of submission, compliance, obe- 
dience, is a stronger force than most of us 
imagine. 

^We need not analyze the genesis of the force 
that has kept men under government. There 
are almost as many theories as there are inquir- 
ers. It has been said to be compulsion, — phy- 
sical force, by one school of writers; by 
another school, agreement, — a contractual re- 
lation. For many generations a popular the- 
ory was that authority is given to rulers by 
God, or the eternal reason; — this theory cost 
King Charles 1 his head. Another school con- 
tends that it rests upon some psychological 
principle inherent in human character. There 
may be a vast practical difference in results, if 
some of these theories are pushed to a limit ; 
but that there must be sovereignty in the state, 
however derived, and obedience to such sov- 
ereignty by the citizen, is plain, if anarchy is 
to be escaped. 
28 



<•* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r& 

If we may use the phrase which Herbert 
Spencer coined and popularized, men natu- 
rally follow " the line of the least resistance " ; 
and to obey, — except where obedience is 
counter to self-interest, or where, in the more 
highly specialized civilizations, it would vio- 
late right, honor, duty, is generally the easy 
course. The Castle of Indolence seldom has 
any vacant rooms. The exceptionally strong 
will, the monarch mind, is rare. The prin- 
ciple of obedience to authority is strongly de- 
veloped inthe race, especially among nations 
where the supreme power is supposed to rest 
upon some religious sanction, as was the case 
with European governments unti J recent years, 
and as is the case with most Oriental nations 
to-day. 

We live in an age of intense specialization. 
A few generations ago we heard of men of 
universal knowledge. Not so now. The vol- 
ume of knowledge has become so vast that no 
man, even the wisest, can do more than to 

29 



<H THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

touch its edge. In no department of study 
is the trend of specialization more active than 
in the interpretation of history. In the hunt 
after the subtle causes that have lurked in the 
bosom of society and have flamed into con- 
suming fire, from time to time, the patient his- 
torian, the student of sociology, has grouped 
tendenci es, i mpul ses, transi ti onal waves of pop- 
ular feeling, into generalizations. Especially 
is this statement true of German scholars, 
with whom specialization has often been re- 
duced to i nfi ni tesi mal analy si s. Thus one school 
of writers dwells upon the economic interpre- 
tation of history. In their view, most pop- 
ular upheavals have been synchronous with 
the poverty of the masses. It is when the peo- 
ple have been ground into hunger by exces- 
sive taxation and public extravagance that they 
have risen, like the blind giant pulling down 
the pillars at Gaza, and swept away dynas- 
ties and royal pageantry. Such, it is said, was 
the mainspring of the French Revolution, — 
30 



<& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r& 

one of the most dramatic events in history. 
Undoubtedly the economic problem has al- 
ways been, and always will be, a powerful 
agent in the genesis of history. 

Others give us the religious interpretation 
of history. They tell us of those epochs when 
great masses of men, impelled by a wave of 
religious enthusiasm, moved to fiery zeal, their 
imaginations touched, their moral sense deep- 
ly stirred, have become knights of the faith, 
missionaries armed with fire and sword; the 
scourges of God. Such causes impelled the 
Saracenic invasion of Africa and Europe, and 
the Crusades. 

Other historians have studied the great 
migratory movements that have swept vast 
bodies of men away from their native envi- 
ronments, and precipitated new elements into 
history. Such were the migrations of the 
tribes of Northern Europe, and of the Asiatic 
hordes which were a powerful element in the 
overturn of the Roman Empire. 

31 



<C* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

In late years there has been an increasing 
interest in the biographies of the great men 
who have moved the world. No view of his- 
tory is more interesting than this study of 
personalities. It has sometimes been pushed 
to an absurd extent, in the attempt to reverse 
historical verdicts, to rehabilitate tarnished 
reputations, and in the exaggerations of hero- 
worship. The relation of great men to their 
times has rightly been a fascinating theme for 
the historian to dwell upon in every age. 

All these, and many more inquiries, are wor- 
thy of the most painstaking study. We can- 
not know too much about them. They are 
all a part of "the moulding together the great 
mysterious incorporation of the human race." 
But the moral lesson of history is larger than 
any exceptional episodes. 

Whatever way governments began, — they 
have been, they are, and will be, until human 
nature and human needs undergo a tremen- 
dous transformation. As has been said, stable 



<S* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL »> 

governments have been rare. Some of the 
forces of modern civilization may make the 
crystallization of society into localized gov- 
ernments possibly more unstable than ever. 
In favor of the permanence of any existing 
order however, there has always been one con- 
serving factor, — habit. Prof. J. M. Bald- 
win, in his instructive work "Mental Devel- 
opment," calls authority "that most tremen- 
dous thing in our moral environment," and 
obedience "that most magnificent thing in 
our moral equipment. ,, Psychologists also 
tell us that habit, one of the phenomena of 
consolidation, indicates downward growth. 
With the race, as with the individual, habit, 
or what Bagehot calls "the solid cake of cus- 
tom/ ' has been one of the impediments to 
progress. Yet, governments have progressed. 
Social progress has proceeded from genera- 
tion to generation. There has always been 
enough of the vis viva to leaven social he- 
redity. Little by little, that part of the race 



<i THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL ^ 

whose progress has not been arrested has 
outgrown the superstition of a divinity that 
doth hedge a king. More and more the 
functions once held by kingcraft have been 
grasped by the people ; — the race steadily 
moving toward the ideal of self-government. 
Every agency that made for enlightenment 
and uplift led to this goal. The great social 
heritage of the past has been the evolution of 
law and order. There has been through the 
ages a sweep of collective forces that has 
taught men self-control, and has constantly 
raised the ethical standard. A damnosa here- 
ditas — "a hurtful inheritance" — of ferocity, 
selfishness, and brutality has been a part of 
the heritage; but there has been enough of 
salt in the general character to rescue liberty 
and justice in the most reactionary times. 

The Democratic Ideal is based upon the 
three great principles of liberty, equality of 
rights and opportunities, and justice. In 
spite of indolence, apathy, inveterate conser- 

34 



<& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r> 

vatism, superstition, ignorance, these have 
been the day-star which the path of civiliza- 
tion has followed. 

Liberty is no longer a vagrant. "The love 
of liberty is simply the instinct in man for 
expansion," says Matthew Arnold. That in- 
stinct is always operative. 

Yet liberty is not an entity; it is only a 
state. Unregulated, discharged from the ethi- 
cal obligations which we owe to each other, 
liberty is lost in anarchy, which is only con- 
summate egoism. 

"The most aggravated forms of tyranny 
and slavery arise out of the most extreme form 
of liberty," says Plato. 

"If you enthrone it (liberty) alone as means 
and end, it will lead society first to anarchy, 
afterward to despotism which you fear," says 
Mazzini, one of the shining liberators of the 
last century. 

"If every man has all the liberty he wants, 
no man has any liberty," says Goethe. 

35 



<C* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

In other words, the rights of man must be 
articulated with the duties of man. Freedom 
cannot exist without order. They are concen- 
tric. Without the recognition of the sanctity 
of obligation to others, the age-long aspira- 
tion of the race for liberty is an impotent 
endeavor. It would have plunged eyeless 
through the cycles in which it has worked its 
way into civilization, had it not been that reci- 
procity, mutual help, is a basis of its being. 
Mankind can never be absolved from this 
eternal law. 



We are now told that a reaction has set in 
against democracy; that the results of the 
democratic ideal, so far as attained, are a fail- 
ure; that the tyranny of the mob has suc- 
ceeded to that of the single despot ; that in 
the most liberal governments of the world, 
even in the United States and England, where 
the problem of government has been most 
36 



** THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

thoroughly worked out, the people are for- 
getting their high ideals and are using their 
collective power for base and ignoble pur- 
poses; that the moral tone of the government 
is lowered ; that an insane greed for wealth 
has infected the nations ; that there is a blunt- 
ing of moral responsibility and a cheapening 
of national aims. This great indictment comes 
from intense lovers of liberty and the truest 
friends of democracy. 

Herbert Spencer put himself on record, 
in his last years, as fearing that the insolent 
imperialism of the times and the power of 
reactionary forces would lead to the re-bar- 
barization of society. 

John Stuart Mill said, "The natural ten- 
dency of representative government, as of 
modern civilization generally, is towards col- 
lective mediocrity. ,, 

John Morley tells us that "outside natural 
science and the material arts, the lamp burns 
low"; he complains that nations are listening 

37 



^ THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

to "the siren song of ambition ;" that while 
there is an immense increase in material pros- 
perity, there is an immense decline of sincer- 
ity of spiritual interest. He also speaks of 
"the high and dry optimism which presents 
the existing order of things as the noblest 
possible, and the undisturbed sway of the 
majority as the way of salvation." 

If you care to read the summing-up of the 
tremendous i ndi ctment against modern democ- 
racy, you will find it in Hobhouse's striking 
work "Democracy and Reaction/' This 
thoughtful author claims that the new impe- 
rialism, which has become an obsession among 
the great powers of the world within a few 
years, "stands not for widened and enno- 
bled sense of the national responsibility, but 
for a hard assertion of racial supremacy and 
national force," and pleads for "the un- 
folding of an order of ideas by which life 
is stimulated and guided," and for "a reasoned 
conception of social justice." 
38 



& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

Unfortunately there is too much truth 
in all these utterances. These are not wild 
and whirling words. We need not to be 
told of the evils of our times. We hardly 
dare turn the searchlight upon our own civi- 
lization, for we know how much of shame it 
reveals. We need no candid, sympathetic, 
and enlightened critic, like James Bryce, to 
tell us where our republic is weak, in spite 
of our Titanic power, immense prosperity, 
roaring trade, restless energy, chartered free- 
dom. We know that, in many aspects, "the 
times are out of joint." The sordid and in- 
capable government of many of our large cit- 
ies; the venality among those to whom great 
public trusts have been committed; the re- 
crudescene of race-prejudice; the colossal for- 
tunes heaped up by shrewd manipulations of 
laws — which have been twisted from their 
original intent — and by unethical methods ; — 
mob-violence, Lynch law, the ever-widening 
hostility between the employers of labor and 



& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t*> 

the wage-earner; — so much of what Jeremy 
Taylor called "prosperous iniquity"; the 
blare of jingoism, the coarser and grosser form 
which athletics have assumed, even among 
young men who are students at our universi- 
ties, — in the sublime words of Milton, "be- 
holding the bright countenance of truth in the 
quiet and still air of delightful studies"; — 
the hatred felt by the poor toward the rich, 
and the disdain felt by the rich for the poor; 
— all these and many other evils, indeed, ex- 
ist. Yes, the times are out of joint. But they 
have always been out of joint. 

These evils are not the result of popular 
government; they are incident to our tran- 
sitional civilization. They have always ex- 
isted, probably in a grosser form than to-day. 
Would a return to monarchical government 
better things? 

Possibly we have anticipated too much of 
organized democracy. It is still aiming for 
its ideal. Organized democracy is not a final- 
4 o 



** THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL f* 

ity ; it is only a status by which public opin- 
ion for the time being can be most effectively 
expressed in government. 

The reaction, if there be one, is moral and 
spiritual, rather than political. The Ameri- 
can people have been densely absorbed in the 
material development of our wonderful coun- 
try. The task has been a huge one. So far 
as it has been completed, it has been magnif- 
icently done. If we have seemed to worship 
the Golden Calf, we may find in due time 
how unsatisfying wealth-gathering is. If at 
present the consumer seems to be throttled 
by the trust magnate on one hand, and the 
labor-trust on the other, — each monopoly 
working to the common purpose of keeping 
up prices to be paid by the consumer, — the 
remedy is in his own hands. It is not in riot, 
revolution, anarchy, by frenzied declamations 
against those who are doing only what nine- 
tenths of the human kind would do for them- 
selves if opportunity were afforded; but by 

41 



«* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t+ 

using the power which free government gives 
to the people, and correcting the evils by 
what Gladstone called "the resources of civ- 
ilization/' Out of the roar and brawl of the 
times will come a sharp examination into the 
system of laws which permit the accumulation 
of stupendous fortunes, by the "cornering" 
of a commodity which human necessities re- 
quire; by shrewd manipulations of tariff, pa- 
tent, corporation and transportation laws, and 
by other anti-social agencies. The people, the 
consumers, create all the legislatures, appoint 
all the judges, execute all the laws. The for- 
tunes of the rich exist because the people so 
allow. "A breath can make them, and a 
breath has made." All the creature-comforts, 
all culture-conquests have been evolved by the 
people. It is not by a reversion to Asiatic 
paternalism, or by the assumption of all in- 
dustrial agencies by the State, which is the 
present aim of Socialism, or by a retreat into 
aboriginal lawlessness and intense selfishness, 



«* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r& 

— which Anarchism would result in, — that 
the remedy will come. 

The American people will work these prob- 
1 ems out and wi 1 1 work them out ri ght. ' ' The 
glory of the sum of things " does not come 
with a flash. There are always remedial agen- 
cies actively at work. They have saved civil- 
ization again and again, when the economic 
order seemed about to break down, when 
effete governments have fallen in cataclysms 
which have almost wrecked the social fabric; 
when mankind seemed to be wandering in a 
wilderness of ignorance, doubt and despair. 
Human nature is a tough, elastic, expansive 
article. If common sense is a product of the 
ages, so is what is termed " the corporate mo- 
rality" of the race. Everything makes for 
what Burke said he loved, "fcpanly, moral, 
regulated liberty." 

It is hard for us to learn the imperative les- 
son that everything, except moral and spiri- 
tual elements, is only transitional. We are too 



*? THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL * 

much inclined to think that any existing status 
has come to stay. Not so. While evils do not 
cure themselves, evil is only the negative of 
the good. The human agent, with his enor- 
mous plasticity, constantly widening intelli- 
gence, and marvelous capacity for growth, is 
always the instrument, guided by the unseen 
powers that make for rectitude, to strangle 
wrong. There is always more good than evil ; 
otherwise society could not hold together. 
If progress has been slow, it is because it 
ought to be slow. 

In our economic order, the trust, the trade- 
unions, — often in our day instruments of 
danger, — are factors that in the end will tend 
to good. They are a part of the great syn- 
thetic movement which is unifying the race. 
They will leal^o a greater coherency in our 
industrial life. They are educational in their 
tendency. Great fortunes, dizzying wealth, 
have their evil side ; they are monstrous crea- 
tions which have been caused by a union of 

44 



^ THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

constructive talent and the mechanical inven- 
tions of the age. By and by their possessors 
may see that they are but ashes ; intolerable 
burdens; gilded rubbish. But in our present 
stage there is need of wealthy men. They 
have important uses. Business has heretofore 
been too largely directed to the acquisition 
of wealth. This grossness will be succeeded 
by an era of equitable distribution. 

We must remember that the very idea of 
property implies more or less of selfishness. 
An ideally altruistic man could not acquire 
property beyond his immediate needs. What 
view of it may be taken in future ages we 
know not. At present, however, it is abso- 
lutely necessary. To protect life and liberty, 
government must protec t pr operty. Un- 
doubtedly the possessioi^BC^^nous wealth, 
thereby generating sharpoMncrions between 
classes, is inimical to the democratic ideal. 
Democracy presupposes a tolerable measure 
of equality in possessions, and an absence of 



<* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

class privilege. The people must perhaps re- 
cast much of their legislation, to make sure 
that their public franchises and natural mo- 
nopolies are not exploited by the few at the 
expense of the many. In a country where 
the press is allowed unlimited freedom, and 
where every man has a share in the govern- 
ment, where laws are easily modified, there 
should be little difficulty in curbing the pre- 
tensions of insolent wealth and protecting the 
people from lawlessness. 

Possi bl y i n t he Soci al i st i c movement, whi ch 
is now academic, crude and unscientific, and 
which, in it present stage, offers as a healing 
balm for industrial evils only the paralysis of 
state despotism, there may be a curative germ. 
Certainly, at its base, is the principle of human 
brotherhood^Jpkration and a lofty altru- 
ism. It is no^^iWagonism with the demo- 
cratic ideal ; ultimately it may be resolved 
into an auxiliary in purging society from 
some of the evils with which it is infected. 
46 



<& THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

If we live in an era of greed and graft, we 
also Jive in an era of enormous goodness, un- 
paralleled philanthropy, increasing intelli- 
gence and advancing ethical standards. Can 
there be any doubt which forces will win? 

The Democratic Ideal, towards which all 
nations are drifting by the inexorable sweep 
of ethical forces, still shines before the Amer- 
ican people. Whatever is rotten, vulgar, base, 
corrupt, in our body politic will be purged 
by the same law of progress, moral, physical, 
social, spiritual, which has brought the race 
to its present transitional status. Lincoln's 
ideal of a government, of the people, for the 
people, by the people, will not perish from 
the earth. Up from the scum and reek of 
corruption, — unless the ancient power of 
conscience and intellect are dead, and they are 
not dead, but live in deathless vigor, — will 
spring a new growth of justice, liberty, love. 

But the nation must not lose its vision, — 
that incommunicable quality that leads to the 

47 



<* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL r& 

light. "Where there is no vision, the peo- 
ple perish." 

The past is behind us, with all its solemn 
monitions. The future beckons us to the 
shining uplands of limitless progress. The 
ascent is not easy, but it must and will be 
made. 

mountain-born, sweet with snow-filtered air 
"From uncontaminate welts of ether drawn 
JJnd never-broken secrecies of sky, 
Freedom, with anguish won, misprized till lost, 
They keep thee not who from thy sacred eyes 
Catch the consuming lust of sensual good 
And the brute s license of unfettered will. 

J. R. Lowell, " The Cathedral." 



Beautiful! my Country! ours once more! 

Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 

O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, 

Jind letting thy set lips, 

Treed from wrath's pale eclipse, 

48 



<S* THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL t& 

The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, 
What words divine of lover or of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it 
Among the Nations bright beyond compare ? 

What were our lives without thee ? 

What all our lives to save thee ? 

We reck not what we gave thee! 

We will not dare to doubt thee, 
"But ask whatever else, and we will dare! 

J. R. Lowell, " Com?nemoration OdeP 



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